Towards Transformation

Introduction

This is the last of three core sections of the report, New Zealand E-government 2007: Progress Towards Transformation:

• Real people, real stories presents research findings from the perspectives of New Zealanders who use government services.
• Delivering e-government offers insight into progress towards e government in New Zealand from the perspectives of agencies which deliver government services.
• Towards transformation draws together "think pieces" by 15 individuals from various stakeholder groups, who were invited to contribute their views on the future of e-government in New Zealand.

The full report assesses the extent of achievement towards the Networked State Services Goal and the 2007 milestone of the E-government Strategy: "that networks and Internet technologies are integral to information and service delivery in the New Zealand State Sector to citizens".

Approach

Here, the focus falls on the future of e-government through the diverse perspectives of government stakeholders. Over the next 10 years, the work of e-government will be concerned with the transformation of government operations and service delivery through the use of technology and greater engagement with citizens. Current understanding of progress to date is supplemented here with a sense of how e-government might move forward.

The e-government domain is inherently diverse and encompasses various sectors. Fifteen people from a wide spectrum of stakeholder and citizens' groups were invited to contribute their views on the future of e-government and its transformational possibilities. They were asked to speak as representatives of a particular domain, demographic, or sector. With their own sense of the current state of e-government, each shares their particular perspective on how e-government might or should look in future. Their diverse voices – public servants, vendors, academics, activists, and teenage students – form a mosaic that represents public and private interests in both local and international contexts.

These contributions have the potential to generate ideas to support strategic thinking for the future, and to assist government to identify specific areas for improvement as it moves towards the 2020 goal of transformation. As a way of beginning this process, the "think pieces" are preceded below by a simple narrative, What will e-government in 2020 look like?, woven from the salient ideas they contain about e-government. This narrative of the future is necessarily incomplete – its incompleteness will help identify other gaps in the picture that might benefit from further thought. The narrative is followed by a thematic summary of the strategic, future-oriented thinking, represented in these pieces.